and I literally have no idea what it is. I think it may be a prune/sweet potato combination but I can't be sure. How it found its way to my pants, below the knee, I cannot say. I need to wash these pants anyhow, since I've worn them for at least 10 minutes around the baby - such is life and our now never ending laundry. Prunes were messy today. We got prunes in our hair, behind our ears and even inside our ears. I'm sure I haven't seen the last of the prunes.
I haven't showered today, but I'm fairly certain I showered yesterday. I must have showered yesterday because I still have some makeup on today that I put on yesterday (oops). It's irrelevant. The baby is sleeping.
About that sleeping baby - this sleep training thing isn't for the weak, let me tell you. I'm reading and practicing from the book, Moms on Call. And yes, it does advocate some crying it out (CIO for the crazy, abbreviating, don't-have-time-to-type-whole-words mom community) and though I never thought I'd be one to let my baby cry, I found that I was becoming a slave to my baby. This led to severe lack of sleep on my part and mini meltdowns (me and the baby) almost daily. It wasn't working for us, which is the important and personal part of this. And while I hate to hear my baby cry, I have learned something from the process. The kid just does not want to go to sleep! When I put him in bed, when he knows he's supposed to go to sleep, he cries. Not because he's not tired - because most of the time he surely is - but I really think he just doesn't want to sleep (unlike mom and dad). Last night, we literally had to wake him up to get his diaper changed and get him a bath and get him to eat one last time before bed and STILL when his little head hit that mattress he wanted to cry about it. Thankfully, it was a short one - less than 5 minutes.
I know that I may very well get some flack for letting my baby cry and being a terrible mom and blah blah blah, but thankfully (weird to be thankful for this), I don't believe I have many followers on this blog at the moment. I honestly don't know how most of my friends/acquaintances feel on the whole subject of parenting so I could be surprised but hopefully as people that know me, they would at least be kind. Something else that I've learned from being a mom is that some moms are really mean, really big bullies. I think it's another one of those things that because so many of these groups are formed online, we naturally have a barrier of being anonymous and therefore can just bully whoever the heck we want to. It can be awful.
I'm a lurker on these mom message boards - I rarely post anything because I really don't think people care that much about what I have to say since I'm not a regular poster and people don't "know me" but really, some of these moms are just mean berating new moms for choosing to try and make their baby fit into their lives as opposed to creating this whole new world that revolves around this little human. And to that point, some of the other moms are plain ignorant, posting questions about what size diaper they should get for their baby when it is printed clearly on the packaging and all they really need to do is learn to read. The biggies on the boards are CIO, vaccinations and let's throw solid food out there as well. I'm not even going to touch on vaccinations right now except to say that I choose to vaccinate my child and that I trust the opinion and guidance of my pediatrician.
It's like the internet has made all of us doctors sponsored by Google. I honestly don't know how some of these moms have the time to do all of this research to try and disprove modern medicine. But alas, I'm the one that hasn't showered today, who's updating my blog.
So back to this whole CIO thing - as much as I hated it at first, I do actually agree with the concept. The kid needs to know how to get back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night and needs to know how to get to sleep in the first place without me rocking him. I know, hard lessons for a 6 month old, but harder, I would venture to argue, when they're old enough to talk back to you. Think on that one for a few minutes.
We've been at it for a little over 2 weeks. My book told me that in 3-5 nights, he'd understand the schedule and would no longer be waking up at night. Well, we've had 2 nights, yes 2, where this has happened so far and each has been both glorious and surprising. As stated earlier, we have yet to put him in bed with the knowledge he's going to bed and have him be happy about it, but the screaming is lessening. Mind you, we did test the theory one night last week. Mid scream-fest I went to pick him up and try to burp him to see if maybe he really was just gassy. The crying stopped immediately and there were no tears to speak of. Well played, Mr. Prune Face.
I'm more hopeful this week, than I was last week and getting better at making my own baby food - more on that in a future blog, I'm sure. But, I think that's all we can ask for sometimes as parents - better now than it was. We'll get there, and we'll figure it out. Until then, I do truly believe that not getting everything you want all the time (being held all the time, not taking any naps) is a lesson that even a 6 month old can benefit from.
